Related

As Wall Street collapsed with a bang, almost no one noticed that
we're on the brink of war with Pakistan. And, unfortunately, that's not
too much of an exaggeration. On Tuesday, the Pakistan's military ordered
its forces along the Afghan border to repulse all future American
military incursions into Pakistan. The story has been subsequently
downplayed, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen,
flew to Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, to try to ease tensions. But the
fact remains that American forces have and are violating Pakistani
sovereignty.

You have to wonder whether the Bush administration understands what
it is getting into. In case anyone has forgotten, Pakistan has a hundred
plus nuclear weapons. It's a country on the edge of civil war. Its
political leadership is bitterly divided. In other words, it's the perfect recipe for a catastrophe.

All of which begs the question, is it worth the ghost hunt we've
been on since September 11? There has not been a credible sighting of
Osama bin Laden since he escaped from Tora Bora in October 2001. As for
al-Qaeda, there are few signs it's even still alive, other than a
dispersed leadership taking refuge with the Taliban. Al-Qaeda couldn't
even manage to post a statement on the Internet marking September 11,
let alone set off a bomb.

U.S. forces have been entering Pakistan for the last six years. But
it was always very quietly, usually no more than a hundred yards in, and
usually to meet a friendly tribal chieftain. Pakistan knew about these
crossings, but it turned a blind eye because it was never splashed
across the front page of the country's newspapers. This has all changed in the last month, as the Administration stepped up
Predator missile attacks. And then, after the New York Times ran an
article that U.S. forces were officially given the go-ahead to enter
Pakistan without prior Pakistani permission, Pakistan had no choice but
to react.

On another level the Bush Administration's decision to step up
attacks in Pakistan is fatally reckless, because the cross-border
operations' chances of capturing or killing al Qaeda's leadership are
slim. American intelligence isn't good enough for precision raids like
this. Pakistan's tribal regions are a black hole that even Pakistani
operatives can't enter and come back alive. Overhead surveillance and
intercepts do little good in tracking down people in a backward, rural part of the world like this.

On top of it, is al-Qaeda worth the candle? Yes, some deadender in
New York or London could blow himself up in the subway and leave behind
a video claiming the attack in the name of al-Qaeda. But our going into
Pakistan, risking a full-fledged war with a nuclear power, isn't going
to stop him.

Finally, there is Pakistan itself, a country that truly is on the
edge of civil war. Should we be adding to the force of chaos? By
indiscriminately bombing the tribal areas along the Afghan border, we in
effect are going to war with Pakistan's ethnic Pashtuns. They make up
15% of Pakistan's 167 million people. They are well armed and among the
most fierce and xenophobic people in the world. It is not beyond their
military capabilities to cross the Indus and take Islamabad.

Before it is too late, someone needs to sit the President down and
give him the bad news that Pakistan is a bridge too far in the "war on
terror."

Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, the novel Blow the House Down.